Author Topic: Political Interviews - Campbell, Humphries  (Read 714 times)

celeste

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Political Interviews - Campbell, Humphries
« on: 19:41:51, 06/10/09 »


5 Live Breakfast 5 Live



Our dear leaders kept popping up all over last week. If you timed your station-flipping perfectly on Tuesday morning, it was as if you were having breakfast with David Cameron. Ditto with Gordon Brown on Wednesday. In the run-up to the local elections, Dave and Gord chose to cram their radio chats together, nipping between 5 Live Breakfast and the Today programme with barely minutes in between each interview.

This meant that you could contrast the differing approaches. The smooth-talking, studiedly intimate younger guy or the serious, grumpy, facts-and-figures traditionalist. Yes, Nicky Campbell and John Humphrys are as different as granite and cheese and it's tricky to work out which interview technique works best.

On Tuesday, with Cameron, Campbell was jocular, asking the Tory leader to imagine voters saying: 'I don't like Gordon, I love Dave, I am going to vote Tory because...' '...the Conservatives will do more to strengthen the family,' quoth Dave. The following interview was competent, if not revolutionary. When, at the end, Cameron mentioned that he was off to the Today programme, Campbell made his feelings clear. 'So people can hear the same stuff again in a couple of minutes,' he huffed.

Humphrys was much harder on Cameron, resulting in a far better interview. The Today veteran's incessant niggling led to Cameron admitting that, yes, he had been angry during Prime Minister's Questions because 'when they're clambering into the premiership on the backs of five million poor people, then they deserve a good kicking'.

But with Brown on Wednesday, Humphrys was surprisingly laid-back. He let him bash on without challenge, the interview mushing into a monologue of percentage points and achievement lists. Previously, though, Brown had been on 5 Live. And Campbell's interview was amazing.

He began by asking Brown what he'd first thought of when he'd woken up, to which Brown gave a long, dull reply about house prices. Campbell pounced. Tony Blair, he said, would have given a 'more human answer. Do you think you have a presentational problem? Because we got a barrage there, and we stayed with it, but some people find that difficult, that lack of human connection... People are suspecting they're seeing the ruthless ambition that you had is now married with incompetence'.

Campbell's intrusiveness was painful to hear, but served Brown better. The PM admitted he'd got things wrong - 'I am listening, I am learning all the time' - and was far less of a robot than he'd seemed on Today




« Last Edit: 19:48:50, 06/10/09 by celeste »
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